my personal philosophy is selling is for losers and what I mean by that is we’re not trying to sell something to somebody that they don’t need right we’re literally trying to solve our problems we’re not trying to sell we’re trying to solve and we’re helping the most important people solve some of their biggest most important problems that’s what sales is nothing more nothing less hey it’s great to have you back for another episode of the Craig Rell leadership podcast where I feel um in describ ably called to help you become a
leader that people love to follow today you’re going to be blessed beyond measure I have with me an award-winning speaker a world-renowned sales coach believe it or not the first black president in private aviation in the United States of America uh she’s been featured on ABC CBS NBC Fast Company she was even a keynote speaker at the Global Leadership Summit and is the author of the book Ally leadership success strategies to lead people who are not like you in an evolving workplace today we have Stephanie Chun Stephanie welcome
to the podcast well thank you so much for having me you know how to introduce a gal by the way it is a it’s a real honor you know I’ve I’ve been a fan since we met and uh it seems like we became friends immediately yes yes I’m loving the Friendship actually I love your I love your heart and and your passion to lead and I’m really excited for uh those in our community may not yet know you to get to know you and to to hear about your book you you’re a worldclass leader you had massive success in changing cultures in creating
new um Financial streams of profit I think from what I’ve understand at the heart of what you do is you’re really really good at sales yes I’d like to think so thank you very much after hitting a couple of billion dollars over over a few years so it’s been really interesting me because I started out in selling for the Airlines and then I eventually got recruited into selling for private Aviation so I always say when you’re selling private jets you’re at the top of the uh the the food chain if you will so you have to get really
specific on how do you sell because you’re not selling to the masses you’re selling to the 1% of the 1% of the 1% right so when you were selling to the airlines what were what were you selling then um actually I was selling corporate travel a lot of people don’t realize that the airlines actually has a very large Fleet or sorry large Sal team and so you sell to corporations you sell to Once Upon time travel agencies as well so usually you have either corporate sales or Leisure sales depending on what your Market is so yeah it was corporate
sales so to a lot of people who haven’t done sales it feels intimidating like I’m not going to be good at sales was there a time early on where you recognized you were more naturally gifted or had the ability to learn quickly you know what’s really interesting is when I started off so I started off working in the Airlines at the tickety counter parking planes loading luggage and checking customers in and one of our heads of VP of sales he actually is the one that noticed that I should be in sales because I was
actually going on the operations route right and so one day he stopped and he’s like Steph every time I come through this airport I see you with the smile on your face you’re serving customers I think we have we you in the wrong position I think you should be in sales and I didn’t know anything about sales right and so my very first job I was like okay because I trusted him as a leader and so I was 25 years old my first job selling for the airlines my quota was $25 million and so I started off really really rough because $25 you
know $25 million quota not having sold a thing before in your life it was a rough road and I had a boss who wasn’t what you and I would consider to be a great leader she wasn’t a developer of people she was very clear you got to get this $25 million in if you don’t do it I’ll just simply fire you and hire somebody else who can get it done that was her development style right so when I first started I was just I was really I was horrible and eventually I ended up having to figure out how can I get this to make sense to me like when do you use
